My Vacation as Parallax, Pt. 1

I’m on vacation. Shawnee to Omaha to Chicago to Kansas City to Shawnee.
The goal of my trip- apart from the obvious “not-working” and “spending-money-
I-don’t-have”- is to visit some significant places I’ve been and observe how they’ve
changed. I have hopes this will give me some insight as to how I’ve changed too.
I’m retracing my steps so I can maybe find the joy I’ve lost along the way.

I visit these cities and it is as if a massive projection of each city is playing across the
city itself, an overlaid transparency of the buildings gently overlapping those same
buildings.
The places and the people are exactly as they were before. Except they aren’t.
The differences aren’t something my eyes are keen to see. They are differences only
slightly perceived by my mind, consciously felt but just barely so.

I’ve got it.
Each site I visit delivers a hastily sketched simulacrum of my previous experience
with it.
I am living a biopic of my last ten years.

The soundtrack is fantastic.

My vacation began, as all vacations do, with a haircut in my sister’s south OKC home.
As I sat still and made small talk I watched her four-year-old play. She is not a baby
anymore. She’ll be five soon. I moved from Chicago to Oklahoma in time for her
birth. Contemplating the swift movement of that time was the perfect set-up for an
emotionally bereft drive through some of the most soul-crushingly boring terrain in
out fair nation: Kansas.

Kansas wishes you to fall asleep at the wheel.
The only radio stations with consistent reception are dreadful arch-conservative
talk and equally dreadful 3-chord Christian pop music.
I discovered to my horror that I had only one CD in the car.

Armchair Apocrypha, Andrew Bird’s 2007 album, is a CD my wife and I picked up
shortly into our marriage. We lived in Portland, OR at the time and were classically
newlywed-poor.
I listened to this godforsaken reminder of my past for probably four and a half of my
eight-hour drive.
I could now happily choke Mr. Bird.

It’s a lovely album, really. Bird’s voice is self-aware and quite pleased with itself. His
arrangements are interesting enough to keep one’s attention. He whistles a lot and
plays the saw.
Charmed, I’m sure.


There is no single lyric on this album that speaks to some deeply pained or needy
part of my spirit.
Driving through the torture that is central Kansas the songs became the only texture
on the plains. The solitude and boredom of the drive teamed with the music to
assault me with images of the early days of my marriage.
It was quite painful.
I leaned into it.

I, like you and everybody else, am a rock star while driving alone. I sing along with
every song- even those with unfamiliar lyrics- and I do it in full voice.
There were times when I could almost hear her in the passenger seat harmonizing
perfectly just like a few years ago.
Just awful.

I broke from Andrew Bird infrequently to listen to the shrill invective of talk radio
for a couple of minutes at a time, just to hear another human voice speaking.
By the time I was near enough to Omaha to tune in NPR, the afternoon programming
was instrumental music.

The gall.

Brotherly Love

The first two hours I spend at work are the best part of my day. The sun is barely up, like most of my clientele. I show up at 7am- much earlier than I need to- and until 9am I see very few people.
My shop is quiet, still. It is an ideal environment for reflection and playing melancholy records.

Lately I’ve spent those two hours listening twice (or more) to the album I and Love and You by the Avett Brothers.¹
It’s perfect for the time I’m mostly alone.
These songs turn from quiet regret to boisterous hope and back (and forth and back and forth).

Much is made of the power music has to conjure memories and “feelings” from our lives. We attach songs to events. My counselors always called those “grounded feelings”.
Grounding our feelings to song is an automatic gesture that helps us order the events in our personal timelines. It’s important to have order because as we grow older and our individual histories lengthen we simply have more memories, ugly and beautiful.
It’s a lot to keep up with.

The emotions I’ve experienced over the last couple of months will always be “grounded” to this Avett Brothers album.

This record manages to drag my mind roughly across the last decade of my life.
It recalls success and failure.
In these songs I hear the story of my dear friend Kacie Jo moving to Kansas City, great for her but heartbreaking for her many friends left behind.
I hear these songs as I saw the paintings of my buddy Lucas Simmons, vague abstraction and vivid accuracy all at once.
This album feels personal in those ways. These are words I’ve spoken.
The key line of the title track is this: “Three words that became hard to say: ‘I’, and ‘Love’, and ‘You’.”
No words could hit so close to home as these.

For me to be reminded through song of pleasant things is a delightful entertainment. But to hear songs that goad me to face my loss and regret and shame? That is exercise. It is a practice that builds the muscles of my internal life, my emotional strength. And with the blows I’ve suffered- frequently at my own hand- in the last few years, I need the workout.

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1 I’m a newcomer to this band. I heard them a few years ago and thought it sounded nice, but I never bothered listening to more of their work. Then they appeared on the Grammys and got quite famous. I have the sophomoric habit of assuming that if a lot of people are into a band the band must be lousy, since most people have the kind of taste that makes Nickleback a group of millionaires. But I was wrong about Avett. They’re the real deal. And this is the album that sold me. ^↩

Collecting Bowie

I’ve always been a collector. As a child I collected GI Joe and Masters of the Universe figures and toys. As a pre-teen and teen I collected baseball cards (and as an adult… as Mitch Hedberg said, “I still do, but I used to too.”). In early adulthood I collected rare books, because I had finely tuned my pretension.

Now I’m collecting Bowie.
As in, I’m now in the habit of spending time and money in the pursuit of owning David Bowie’s official discography- in its entirety- on vinyl.

“Why?” is a question I’ve been asked, and fairly.
I answer variously.
“Why wouldn’t I?”, is one answer.
“There’s nobody better than Bowie and I want to have all of what’s best,” is another.
“Shut up and mind your own stupid business,” is probably the most sensible and complete answer I can give.

The fact is that I’m the kind of guy who obsesses about things. I’ve long been obsessed with the music of David Bowie, his early work especially. I often say that even if you don’t hear it in my actual music, Bowie is the single greatest influence on me as a songwriter. He was my introduction to concept albums and all but one of my own albums have been concept albums. His work is diverse and beautiful and frequently discomforting if not downright scary. And no popular musician has reinvented themselves as many times, nor as successfully.
He’s the best and I love him and I’ll brook no argument on the topic.

Currently I own vinyl copies of only eight of the 25 studio albums David Bowie released (and two haven’t been issued on vinyl, so let’s say 8 out of 23). I have these and a few more on CD and/or MP3, but that doesn’t really count. It doesn’t sound like many, but let’s see your collection.

Here are the ones I have:

• Space Oddity (1969) This album was originally released under the title David Bowie: Man of Words, Man of Music. The later title is obviously superior. And I love my copy and will always keep it, but I would give my eye teeth for a good first issue under the original title and cover art.
• Hunky Dory (1971) This is my favorite Bowie album. My record is near-mint but I’d sure buy a better sleeve to keep it in. (Vanity, is what it is. I want it to look as good as it sounds.)
• The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (1972) Probably Bowie’s most famous album, or at least most popular. I’ve owned no fewer than four different copies of this album. Smart money says I’ll buy more before I’m done.
• Diamond Dogs (1974) This album is scary and has a dystopic future/post-apocalyptic feel, a theme I’ve liberally cadged throughout my work. My copy is in excellent condition and you’ll get it from me when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
• Young Americans (1975) Bowie’s most “saxophony” album. I own one copy (that I listen to way too often) but I own two sleeves. One has a badly damaged copy of Diamond Dogs inside and I will give that to you if you want it and ask me nicely.
• Station to Station (1976) I own an incredible first pressing of this record (that I got for an astoundingly cheap $9!) and have never been able to listen to it only once. Side B ends and I flip it back to side A for a second spin. It’s beautiful.
• Let’s Dance (1983) This album has my favorite Bowie song, “Modern Love”. It’s a happy dance tune with perfectly bleak lyrics. “I don’t believe in modern love,” he sings. Agreed.
• Tonight (1984) This album boasts my favorite cover art. He’s painted blue and appears almost as a religious icon super-imposed over a stained-glass window. Weird and beautiful, just how I like my Bowie.

Now. What’s my next purchase? Whichever one I come across next. My priority is Aladdin Sane (1973), a record I HAVE NEVER SEEN. More likely I’ll pick up Pin-Ups (1973), an album in pretty thick supply at record stores (I’m guessing there are so many copies because it’s a studio album comprised entirely of covers).

After I own all the studio albums I’m sure I’ll feel an overwhelming sense of peace and fulfillment. One week later I’ll start tracking down all the live albums, bootlegs, and novelty releases I can find. This is my quest, and it is a noble one. I guess.

Truthiness

I haven’t done a lot of things.

For example I’ve never built a boat out of balsa wood or any other material. I’ve never broken into an armory. I’ve never spoken to God on the phone, been buried in the desert, or been cut in the kitchen by the knife of my lover.
But these are all things I’ve claimed experiencing in songs I’ve written.

The best thing about writing songs is telling the truth with a series of carefully constructed lies.

I wrote a song called Scorched Earth Policy (from my 2008 album Love Songs For The Apocalypse) wherein the narrator is separated from the one he loves by a thousand miles. They are the only survivors of a nuclear holocaust. His last words are a promise that he will haunt her should he die first.

This is fiction, obviously. (There hasn’t been a nuclear war, you see.)

It doesn’t matter who I wrote that song about, but rather who I’m singing it to when I perform it now.
The distance between us is not 1000 miles. It is considerably less, in fact. And the ground between us isn’t burned beyond use.
It sure feels that way, though. Like we’ve not just scorched the earth but salted it to be sure it’ll stay ruined. Like we’ve built an emotional gap between us that’s harder to cross than a thousand miles.
And dead or not, I’m certain that I will haunt her. As she will haunt me.

That’s the clever part about songwriting.
You may hear a kinda-funny song about being sewn together like Frankenstein’s monster, but I’m singing a song about being manipulated into changing my character.
You may hear a song about being a zombie hungry for human flesh, but I know I’m singing about control and desire.
You may hear a song about intense psychic and emotional pain accompanying the loss of relationship with the most significant love of one’s life…
Well, they can’t all be metaphors.

For the Record

I buy records.
For real.
I buy old fashioned vinyl records. And not just old ones. I buy new music on records. They still make them.
Seriously.

I’m not opposed to MP3s. I like my iPod. In fact, most of the music on my iPod I’ve downloaded for free using codes given as a bonus with the records I’ve purchased. And if you see me walking around town I’m usually listening to MP3s through headphones.
But when I’m home and cooking or cleaning or reading there’s almost always a record playing.

I prefer records for a lot of reasons. Album art is almost non-existent with MP3s, but those 12.75 square inch pieces of cardboard around a record are a great canvas. MP3s have very high fidelity but the warmth and richness of sound vibrations traveling through a crystal tipped stylus is something far better. MP3s are cheap but, as I said, most new records come with a free digital download creating a higher value. (Incidentally, my record player, a portable Crosley, has a USB port and came with software that lets me rip a record into MP3 on my computer so now I can have all those old LPs on portable devices.)
A great thing about my iPod is that it will shuffle my entire music library, playing songs at random from many bands and many genres. The flip side (a term we get from records!) to that is that I rarely listen to an entire album on my MP3 player. But the music I usually listen to is “album” music.  The order of these songs is carefully chosen to construct a complete and cohesive whole. You don’t get that big picture on shuffle, and you just don’t shuffle a record.

But what I like most about records, really, is this:

Listening to records feels cool.

See, listening to records isn’t simply an aural experience. It is tactile:
I slide the record out of the sleeve. I carefully place the record on the turntable, trying not to fingerprint it very much. I lift the tone arm and position it on the record.
When was the last time you positioned a laser so it could read a CD? And can you position anything about an MP3?

I’m not too old-fashioned, but I prefer my entertainment to not be passive. (I’m passive about plenty in other areas of my life.)
When I play a record I have to physically engage with my music. I choose, I place, I play. And then, I listen.
And, yes, that’s the point in the first place.
See, though, some people worked really hard to get that music to me. It seems fitting to put in some effort to hear it.